California NORML is staging a demonstration outside the downtown Federal Building, only a few blocks from where Occupy L.A. has been camped out at City Hall. It's unlikely the president, in town to raise money and hobnob with prominent Latinos, will even know the bud backers are even alive. They smolder anyway.

State NORML chief Dale Gieringer told the Weekly today:

We view the crackdown as a betrayal of Obama's campaign pledge that 'I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.'

While marijuana is a federal outlaw drug of the highest caliber (Schedule I), Gieringer told us he didn't think Obama would continue to wade into this controversy: "I wouldn't be surprised if the administration tried to distance itself from this action."

The protest happens Monday at noon outside the Federal Building at 255 E. Temple St. According to a NORML email blast:

There will be a press conference with Prop 215 co-author Anna Boyce, who will be demanding a meeting with the President at the U.S. Attorney's office.

We thinks the NORML demonstrators will have a better chance getting the nearby Occupiers to join them. From what we hear the Occupy encampment already has the smell of a Cypress Hill concert.

L.A. Weekly staff writer Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.